


Jareth's Little Red Book

by Cobralingus



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cobralingus/pseuds/Cobralingus
Summary: There are more children being wished away than there ought to be, and they all seem to be coming from the same place. Curiouser and curiouser.





	Jareth's Little Red Book

Jareth sat in his throne room, considering. Fairy tales had fallen out of fashion in the human world - it was a time of discovery and free love, after all - yet of late more and more children were appearing in his kingdom.

They had been wished there, there was no doubt of that. Only children who had been wished away could get to the goblin kingdom. And only if they had been wished away by someone who had the care of them: a parent, a sibling, an uncle or aunt, a teacher, a priest. It was a strange thing that so many should suddenly be wished away.

He stood suddenly, pacing the room and idly stepping over the tumbling piles of goblins playing at his feet. There were definitely more of them. More than there should have been. It was a puzzle.

Jareth liked puzzles. And oh, he had been so bored these last few decades. 

He had the new arrivals brought to him, one by one. None of them remembered who they had been, of course, but his expert eye discerned certain similarities. A common tongue. Some with the ragged remains of clothing that bore a striking resemblance to a uniform. And underneath it all, the faint touch of one of his little books.

Interesting.

He had created them during another time when he was bored, sending out the story of a maiden who wished for the goblins to take away a baby in the hopes that one such would try it. Most of the copies had long since vanished, worn out by long use, or lost in the depths of secondhand bookshops and underfunded libraries. One had apparently surfaced again. It would explain the sudden arrival of one child, perhaps two, but there had been dozens over the last few months.

“Strange,” he muttered. The nearby guard looked towards him hesitantly, unsure whether or not the king was speaking to himself. When no more words followed, the guard shrugged and resumed the interrupted patrol.

“Perhaps I should go and see for myself. After all, it has been quite some time since I set foot in the mortal world. So much has changed…”

He turned abruptly, stepping through a doorway that opened into the depths of his dungeons, though any onlooker would only see another castle corridor. He looked up at the towering grandfather clock, its hands ponderous and dull. Time was a fickle thing. He’d thought of courting her once, but she had found him capricious and cruel and cast him aside. But no matter. He had built her this clock as a present to mark the end of their courtship.

Then he had locked her inside it. He was, after all, capricious and cruel. 

And having trapped Time, he commanded her to speed up for him. Not much, just enough that he didn’t have to wait for the next child to be wished away to the goblin kingdom. This one he would fetch for himself.

The tug of the words came as it always did. _I wish the goblins would come and take you away. Right now._ Such a strange urgency to it, though. None of the usual frustration or anger or resentment of an overtired carer. It almost tasted of...fear?

Curious.

Jareth followed behind the small goblins who had come for the child, casting an illusion to conceal his presence. There she was: a woman in a uniform, cradling a swaddled infant in her arms. She glanced back over her shoulder, anxiety so heavy the Goblin King could taste it. But none of her fear was directed at the goblin in front of her. Curiouser and curiouser, as that annoying little blonde child had been so fond of saying. Thank all the dark powers she had only gotten lost in his kingdom rather than having been wished there.

And then, even stranger, the woman handed the baby to the waiting goblins _and thanked them_. This puzzle was proving even more interesting than Jareth had dared hope. He followed the woman as she scurried down the mountain path. A flicker of red in her pocket caught his eye; there, then, was the copy of his little book that had left traces on the children. 

He slipped through the iron gate close on her heels. An orphanage, or so the crude writing outside proclaimed. Unusual that a worker in such a place should be interrogated on her actions, as she was now. Mourning, she claimed, for an infant too weak to live. All lies. Jareth could taste them. The child lived, as she well knew, safely in the goblin kingdom. When they tore into her pockets, searching for evidence of the truth, he very nearly revealed himself. What would such cretins think of a woman who carried a fairy tale in her pocket?

They did not find a fairy tale.

Jareth had forgotten that little piece of paranoia he had worked on the books. They disguised themselves as whatever innocuous title would best protect them. And this particular book…

Ah.

The Goblin King leaned back against the wall as the pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Watched the woman snatch her precious copy of the Chairman’s wisdom back from the brutes who had handled her so roughly. Followed her into the tiny dormitory that held her meagre possessions.

“You wish them away to save them, don’t you?”

Her gasp was low, almost silent. The shock of a woman who had learned to hide her pain far too young.

“You’re him, aren’t you. The Goblin King,” she whispered.

“I am. And none but you will hear or see me, nor anything you say to me.”

She nodded. He was surprised for a moment, then remembered that she had been sending him children for months. A spell of silence was hardly so impressive.

“They…”

He waited patiently as she searched for the right words.

“Some of them have no-one. Some of them, their parents are not allowed to have them. There isn’t enough food here, but my grandmother told me stories of a spirit that took care of orphaned children. I thought that book was just like all the rest of them, but then the words turned into the story and I knew that the spirit was also the Goblin King.”

She paused, looking at him for confirmation. He nodded his agreement.

“They are safe with you? Warm? Happy?”

“They are.”

“Do they remember this place?”

“No. They remember nothing before my kingdom.”

“That’s good,” she replied, tears sliding down her cheeks. “I will keep sending them as long as I can.”

Jareth reached out to her then, surprising both of them.

“Then this is my gift to you. When the day comes that you cannot send them, say the words for yourself.”

“You will save me, too?”

“I promise you I shall. And you will remember nothing of the time before I save you. No matter how long, or how much you suffer while you wait for me.”

She squeezed his hands just once before pushing him away.

“Then you should go. I have a lot of work to do.”


End file.
